Top 50 Songs of 2013 :: [10-2]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2013, and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 10 to 2.

10. Pure Bathing Culture - "Dream The Dare"



It was nothing but post-Beach House jams from Portland's Pure Bathing Culture on "Dream The Dare". In a swimming and viscous arrangement, they still plead, "give me forward motion". The chorus proved to be this propulsion, caring the listener to a sophisticated chord progression and resolution in the second verse. The enduring lyrics, "Come on" and "It's a cage, your chest, do you like what you find?", both urging us forward and outside of ourselves, a most important message in the age of the Snow Globe-sized kingdom of the self.

9. First Rate People - "Dark Age" and the Challenger remix of "Dark Age"





In a rare (and cheap) tie, First Rate People ties with itself and the Challenger remix of "Dark Age". Another song about getting older in a terrifying age of modernity and isolation - they call this, "a note on your phone to remind you tomorrow, 'new keys for a new cage'" - FRP saw their original source material done with even greater bombast and nostalgia by John Ross of Challenger. While we await the 2014 material from FRP member Jon Lawless and Ross (the band name Jo(h)n seems like it would work here), the two synthesizer masters occupy a dual spot for one of the best songs and best remixes of the year.

8. Marika Hackman - "Bath Is Black"



Recalling the harp tones of Joanna Newsome and the British austerity of Laura Marling, Marika Hackman provided one of the most promising breakthroughs of 2013 with "Bath Is Black". It is a world of cold water and old soap, bodies covered in tar and stuck together. The second movement, a little synthetic woodwind push-up, snaps against Hackman's lilting vocal. Full of layers and complexity, "Bath Is Black" never concerned itself with making anyone feel good; the justice proved poetic at best. "You're not coming home tonight," the last and most important lyric, was either edict or realization, and either way it killed.

7. Rainy Milo - "Deal Me Briefly"



If there's a likely and currently unheralded heir to the Lorde throne in 2014, Rainy Milo presents a compelling case beyond her precocious age (18), her solid production connections (Chet Faker here), her label association (EMI to Lorde's UMG) and her winsome but take-no-prisoners voice. Lily Allen isn't a bad comparison save its obvious limitations. "Deal Me Briefly" held one of the best choruses of 2013, a body-rolling, "You let me go so slow" as Milo fights with and against herself in the refrain. It was immediately addictive, demanding attention and a slow dance in the age of the diminishing attention span. In 2014, she may well be living the fantasy.

6. Wet - "U Da Best"/"You're The Best"



Wet wasn't kidding with the title, "U Da Best" when this dropped in the spring. By the time they were Columbia signees with the Neon Gold imprint, the title had changed to "You're The Best", the first sign that the band positions itself for a dominant, corporate 2014. "You're The Best" demolished itself on lyrics like, "All I know is when you hold me/ I still feel lonely, lonely when you hold me", resisting easy treatment and crafting a complex modern love song. Even in an era of increasing superlatives - everything is now "the best" or "the worst" or "the funniest" or the "dumbest" ever - "You're The Best" and its final edicts of "figure out the rest"
and "quit while we're ahead" suggested a rich landscape beneath. The hook stabbed and stuck, a bubbling guitar arrangement that held the transformative vocal of Kelly Zutrau. The listener falls in love with her immediately, left, like her, to figure out the rest later.

5. Born Ruffians - "Needle"



"Needle" bore the marks of being a hip-hop song disguised in rock garb. Born Ruffians opened the locus in a Fleet Foxes-homage before "Needle" lifted off with propulsive guitars and head-nodding rhythms. It was more of a tweaker than anything the Foxes would have made, an enormous and washing chorus that sat on the ceiling looking down at the listener quixotically. The visual simile proved alternately bizarre, "I belong to no one like the watermelon," and meta-cognitive, "I belong to no one, a song without an album." Strange and instantly singable, "Needle" offered the way "away" as final edict of the chorus suggested, alone as the new together.

4. Haim - "The Wire"



Formally and informally, I said enough disparaging things about Haim that I shouldn't be allowed to include them on this list, but, "The Wire," like all great pop, is simply undeniable. The lyrics are generic, and this is one of the great strengths of this song as it transitions to heavy-rotation at Top 40 radio sometime in early 2014. "The Wire" ripped and pulsed, a borrowed Thin Lizzy guitar and a clap-track designed to break necks, the yelps and undulations of the chorus resounding as the singable modulations of a modern teenage wasteland. For the worse, 15 years ago teenage girls idolized Britney, Christina and Jessica. Now, they have Haim and Lorde, two artists who largely write their own music and are comfortable being perceived as weird, girls who successfully recast what being girls can be. For that alone, "The Wire" and "Royals" should be the two most important songs of the year.

3. Lorde - "Royals"



I remember where I was the first time I heard "Royals," always a mark of a song's durability and impact. Ready to hate it - Lana Del Rey leaves this writer immensely flat - "Royals" instead charmed instantly. I quickly became a Lorde Birther - there was no way she was actually 16, I thought - before becoming a Lorde evangelist: This girl, who cares how old, was the absolute Truth. It was just "Royals," the rest of the Love Club EP was promising, as was "Tennis Court" and then her debut LP. They were songs where the image was about destroying imagery. Maybe a partial closing argument for postmodernism, this teenager could make meaning out of the abscence of meaning. More accurately, she could salvage meaning from imagery. Above all, "Royals" was a great jam, the hottest and most essentialized version of the R&B diaspora.

2. Arcade Fire - "Afterlife"



"Afterlife" was the "Sprawl II" of Reflektor, the second-to-last song and proof that the band still had a great pop song in a challenging record. For an album about division and the terrible forces of modern life, "Afterlife" was the most human of songs, privileging our screams and shouts, proving that these tiny human voices could make something from the madness. It made you want to fall in love, or to struggle in saving the love you had, asking the pregnant question, "When love is gone where does it go?". The answer was nowhere, as Butler sang, "Afterlife, what an awful word," there was no next movement, just this. Of course, given the stakes of life and death, or maybe, more accurately, figuring a way to live coherently while alive, "Afterlife" asked for, maybe even demanded, our energies.

Swim Good :: "Sandviken"

Behind the breezy melody of Swim Good's "Sandviken" you might find the stakes are high. A 90s club-keyboard progression (which bears some resemblance to the one on "Act More Stupidly") and a kick-drum downbeat belie the hints of claustrophobia - "the hole in the wall is where I left you" - and the restless identity politics, "I'm not the same me". By the time the clap track hits in the second half, the ebullience inveighs against the darkness, a head-nodding three act play that ends with the edict, "I will never put my hope in any other". According to Swim Good mastermind Jon Lawless, these compositions are limited to one day to write, which explains a bit why he might not need to rely on anyone else when he not spending his days in the beautiful Democratic Republic of his other main avocation, First Rate People. "Sandviken" is the third in a string of excellent recent singles from Swim Good, a testament to these highs and lows, a journey into the darkness of the self.

First Rate People :: "The Sweet Hereafter"

First Rate People's debut long-player, Everest, will be released 5 November, a monolith of pop music years in the making. The two lead tracks, "Dark Age" and "I Bet You Won't Get This Joke At All", are both previously released singles, leaving track three, "The Sweet Hereafter" as the first new material the world will hear from the band. A miasma of synth stabs and club echos, "The Sweet Hereafter" bubbles and stutters with a calculated self-assurance as singer Liam Sanagan describes the difficult architecture of a long-distance romance. Sanagan mourns, "a couple missteps, a mistake you never would have guessed" before Mary Cassidy descends on the track like a terror bird. Inverting classic gender roles with an electro-feminism, Cassidy interrogates, "Would you keep me company/Would you cook for me/would you comfort me/if I put your ass on a flight for free/with the money I got for school?" You'll be singing, "put your ass on a flight for free" days later, the best immortalization of scholarship money misused in pursuit of long distance love. The arrangement surges like a Zube Tube underneath Cassidy, Sanagan returning with a secondary hook before the synth loops head for the sky. It is instantly catchy, forecasting the deep and rich pop sensibilities of Everest and the bright future for this band.

Mary Cassidy and Jon Lawless :: "Make It Do"

Low-end synth stabs menace below Mary Cassidy's smoldering vocal at the outset of latest collaboration with Jon Lawless, "Make It Do". Glittering loops enter into the conversation, effecting the image of slow-motion carbonation, bubbles rising to the surface of an arrangement built for languid jamming. Like so many of Lawless' contraptions, the vocals run at each other in figure-eights, or maybe it's a double helix, overlapping and daring each other in a slow-speed game of chicken, two pairs of headlights aimed at each other on the road that threaten destruction but never collide.

First Rate People :: "Dark Age" [Challenger Remix]

Instantly one of the best remixes of the year, John Ross of Challenger turns his talents on First Rate People slam, "Dark Age". Inverting the chorus and adding a slamming back-beat, "Dark Age", already considerable in scope, becomes a massive black hole, Ross placing Jon Lawless and company on the edge in some approximation of a blurry infinity.

Swim Good :: "Act More Stupidly"

Swim Good returns with another cruel summer single, "Act More Stupidly", a bit of meditative electronic pop.With a synthesizer-horn line that seemingly slips out the side of the mouth, its mournful layers commit themselves to building something elegiac. Maybe there are no victories in a world where the best you can do is sing, "Something's gonna come/you're young". The final movement, a soaring and wordless vocal, trapped at the top of the room finishes the argument: Pensiveness is out, "Act More Stupidly", even when it sounds this good.

Swim Good :: "Summer Solstice"

Jon Lawless returns for the second-single, "Summer Solstice" as Swim Good - the previous effort "Totally A Mess Wild" has functionally disappeared from the Internet. "Summer Solstice" is a snapping synthesizer jam, an upbeat UB40 keyboard riff mixing with a whirring drum loop. With the addition of yelps and the synth horns that showed up all over the First Rate People demos back in 2009, Lawless has here built something entirely ebullient. Lyrically referencing a year-later-on "Solstice", Lawless drawls, "I think I used to play favorites back in 2010/I think I used to play favorites and now I'm doing it again." While absolute clarity is absent in a statement like this, it is the gift of the singer to make it feel relevant anyway, a singable hook about not growing out of old habits. Soon enough, played favorites or not, "Summer Solstice", like the ever collapsing days it describes, evaporates into well-remembered nostalgia.

First Rate People :: "Dark Age"

In their most ambitious and expansive single to date, First Rate People layer the synth-stabs in equal measure to elegy on "Dark Age". Full of killer lyrics about a receding youth like, "We were moody and hopeful and green" and "I'm digging the claws in the feeling", the band describes a sort of dissatisfied hyper-modernity, the song's title, this "Dark Age" described as a note on a phone, rhymed with "new keys for a new cage". It's a generational polemic in form and function, lines about the "folly of youth" backed by a relentless synthesizer progression, a modern-sounding song about an unfolding ribbon of semi-bad times. The outtro, the song's closing group harmony, a nearly two-and-a-half minute mediation on the lyric, "I thought you were showing me a home," implies that this descent into darkness that they call aging, has done little to foster a sense of belonging.The listener is left with a few voices, a plucked guitar and an evaporating synthesizer, aging seconds in silence.

Mary Cassidy and Jon Lawless :: "Verbs"

The output from First Rate People wunderkind, Jon Lawless continues in a steady stream of poppy collaborations with other musicians. In the case of "Verbs", making its US debut here, Lawless is partnered with Mary Cassidy again, the same duo who took us to "Carolina" in February. "Verbs" slides along on the back of a flickering electric guitar and keyboard progression that makes ample use of the "organ" effect button. Cassidy charms with her vocal, rapid-fire on some lyrics (using "car crash" as a useful phonetic tool) and the picture of languid in the song's soaring hook. It is Lawless who manages his usual ringmaster trick, standing somewhere near the center of a chaotic and brilliant idea, seemingly bemused in all his lo-fi glory, admitting to being equal parts "judgmental" and "sentimental". It's a good combination, as it always seems to be.

Jon Lawless and Anna Wiebe - "Go For Broke!" [ft. Nicole Jasper]

The First Rate People collective continues to churn out genre-bending singles, this, "Go For Broke!", a collaboration between brainchild Jon Lawless and Anna Wiebe. It is an archetypical FRP ballad, a loose association of keyboards, a progression bent on resolution, yelping loops hiding in the corners, and a lilting and confessional vocal from Wiebe. Lawless enters late, a half-spoken bridge about the heat of being overly invested, the object of this investment being Wiebe's risk-adverse lyrics in the hook. It is ultimately about the power and perils of restraint, an unlikely angle for a group so bent on allowing any good idea into their music, an even less likely vessel, the relative quietude of "Go For Broke!".

Jon Lawless and Mary Cassidy :: "Carolina"

In what immediately became my second favorite song ever written about Carolina, Jon Lawless and Mary Cassidy, both of First Rate People fame, team up here on "Carolina," the first track from an EP promising to follow in the coming months. It's a heart-broken road song, something about the destructive personal minutia develops in most close personal relationships, and what might be out there to save us. Stylistically, "Carolina" is in the shape of "Nothing Better," a mildly linear conversation between Lawless and Cassidy about the breaking state of affairs. Lawless finally concedes one of the great shrugging lyrics, "There's Carolina to explore/I'm not kidding/I'm driving/And you're just stoned." Healing might be out there on the road; the way out might be the only way through. The melody, a double helix hook, sees Lawless and Cassidy trading roles, a flickering mandolin/ukelee riff providing the backbone for a glimmering slice of heartsick pop.

First Rate People :: "You Won't Get This Joke At All"

First Rate People storm back with the dialogical single, "You Won't Get This Joke At All". Always able to cobble together diverse influences, sometimes forcing the ideas for two songs into a beautiful and catchy cacophony, "You Won't..." opens with synth punches that are equal parts Passion Pit and Britney's "You Drive Me Crazy". Of course, the twist comes with the addition of a dialed-back and pretty acoustic guitar progression and Anna Horvath's singular vocal. One of the best voices in independent music, Horvath is heartbreaking and heartbroken on lyrics like, "There are streets and there are signs / there were worse and better times," a neo-Dickensian understanding of an emotional trauma in our particular modern moment. Her last line, "across these gender lines / I need you," the arrangement returning to the breezy acoustic guitar on which it originally torqued, suggests a profound tensile strength, a durability even. If these two song ideas can be firmly blended into one arrangement, these broken relationships might too survive. "You Won't" is one of the first great songs of 2013 from a band certain to breakthrough this year.

Challenger :: "I Am Switches"

Challenger, a very new band from New York, sound comfortable using metaphor and cliche. On what will be one of the finest debut singles of 2012, "I Am Switches", the first lyric presents a variation of the most common of visual metaphors, "I want to be with you when the other shoe falls." There are others, "my mind is a steel trap" and "I'm lost in the world", followed by the enticingly problematic, "that I'm in love with." For all this universality - these things can and do mean anything to anyone - there is an underlying specific that hurts and works. Behind the churning, ebullient arrangement of synthesizers and melody resides a deeper truth that says nothing of the song's second movement where the the lyrics play mostly in reverse; this is the central portrayal of the protagonist as "just switches". The image of being flipped on and flipped off, the image of the other shoe falling, of being lost in a thing you love, offers a sort of malleable projection for the listener while remaining chillingly specific for the artist. After all, the content of the inverted lyrics in the song's second half are still unknown. You, too, could be switches. It is unsurprising this project began as a film score and it will be even less surprising when the band releases a bizarre and compelling pop full-length, The World Is Too Much For Me, this fall. Think of a cinematic and American First Rate People. Like the sax solo in the midst of "I Am Switches", it will be both a bit cliched and unflinchingly appropriate.

Swim Good :: "Totally A Mess Wild"

There is something charming about the grammatical incorrectness of Swim Good's single, "Totally A Mess Wild". Like it all spilled at once, an overflow of words divorced from construction, the title only forecasts the bright melody that barely fits in the context of the arrangement. In the first half, Jon Lawless and Anna Horvath of First Rate People fame, take one of the first hooks up a crystal staircase into series of immensely satisfying falsetto breaks. Horvath is again a revelation, providing the upper tier of the duet, a slice of crystalline purity soaring over the moving parts below her. This says nothing of the many other members of Swim Good who craft a brilliant cut of polyglot, genre-bended pop. The first hook is the repeating lyric, "nameless, nameless" and the second, the second half, is the eponymous title lyric, predictably bursting out the top of the room. The closest analog is some early Loney Dear work, this being just as delicate and more fun, but suffice it to say, no one else is making pop that sounds like this, a spilling overflow of so many melodies forged into one.

FIRST RATE PEOPLE :: "Summer Job"

The young and brilliant First Rate People are back with a new single, "Summer Job", a wistful look over the shoulder at a season past. It backs recent one-off release, "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art", also available through the band's bandcamp. On "Summer Job", FIRST RATE PEOPLE are in top form, ebullient poly-rhythms bouncing under a melody so infectious that whole song feels like a chorus. Really just a two part exploration of summer pop turning from green to red, gold and brown before dying away with the fall. Jon Lawless and his crew continue to churn out bubblegum lyrics like "You could get a summer job/but it would to be summer again/'cause it's not" side by side with crushing resolutions like, "there are vultures that pick at your thoughts." As the song breaks into its second part, a harmonium and the sweetest female vocal you'll hear in 2011 chime around the lyric, "I don't want to say it will be different" before the male vocal returns (Mike Harloff this time) with the final hook, "Our debt will always unpaid". The final lyrics are echoed by the female counterpart, like a non-tragic version of Postal Service's "Nothing Better". Even with a happy ending, the song fades away like the restless, uncaptureable pop that this band makes so easily and well. If you can catch it, even for a minute (or three and a half), ephemeral and immediate, it is a season gone, but not forgotten.

FIRST RATE PEOPLE :: "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art"

First Rate People return with their most long form effort to date, "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art". For a band with such fine songs and many of them clocking under three minutes, the 4:38 run time on "Work Of Art" feels downright longitudinal. Carrying three or four distinct movements on the single, the band continues to be agile, Swiss Army popsmiths, shifting between melodies with a sense that you're never fully out of the chorus. The arrangement is spacious, with a production sheen that indicates that FRP's days of making little bedroom pop songs might be graduating into something larger, the proverbial roof deck above the cozy studio apartment. Most importantly, like everything else the band has done to date, "Work Of Art" can instantly become your favorite song, the special power of the Canadian kids with pockets overflowing with hooks.



Listen :: First Rate People - "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art"

FIRST RATE PEOPLE :: "FRESH"

Multiplicitious pop-smiths, First Rate People released latest single, "FRESH" to their twitter feed on Valentine's Day. Topping 60 degrees in New York City four days later feels like the perfect time to share such swirling, unapologetic pop music, the absolute birth of spring. Swelling strings hold the arrangment like lacing fingers, while nasally, hooky vocals unleash lyrics about love and rebirth, "singing a song/old paint is peeling/this is that fresh, fresh feeling", describing a pop ressurection in the season of human affection. Like the type of crushing, irrational love they describe, you don't have a world of choice here. You will listen to this on repeat partly because you feel strongly about it and partially because you absolutely have to. Love is a little bit of death. How could you ever be reborn if you never let yourself be killed?

Listen :: First Rate People - "FRESH"

Top 50 Songs of 2010 :: 10-6 [They're sorry they couldn't change]

10. Crystal Castles - "Not In Love" [Ft. Robert Smith]



Crystal Castles, mostly known for their ripping electoclash, found a slice of pop brilliance in 2010 with an assist from Robert Smith. "Not In Love" was rooted in a simple chorus of industrial synths and Smith's lithe, rye vocal modulating the title lyric. It was a cover of a Platinum Blonde original, but that robbed none of the top-shelf pop in the chorus, a 1980s tune recast somewhat anxiously as one of the best hooks of the year.

9. The Jezabels - "Mace Spray"

The Jezabels were the darlings of all the bands we saw this year. Their Kate Bush-tinged pop was best framed on "Mace Spray," a song that lyrically addresses the need for self-defense in an increasingly pessimistic age. The piano chords are spacious and the vocals from singer Hayley Mary eventually take the elevator to the top in the chorus, where the arrangement crashes around her voice, sounding equal parts vulnerable and threatening. With one of the best singles of 2010, the Jezabels already marked themselves as one of the best young bands to watch in the next 12 months.

8. GROUPLOVE - "Colours"

Over the summer we saw the two singers from GROUPLOVE kiss each other on the mouth. This wasn't necessarily scandalous, and our voyeurism was joined by the other fifty or so people in Los Angeles' Troubadour. It was a moment of raw emotion of exactly the kind that the band describes in "Colours," a song rooted in a simple acoustic guitar progression that ends sailing and screaming over a fractured landscape. The band insists on "leaving the ground to find some space," before assuring us, "it really ain't that bad." The final movement is a tautological edict, "We call it ... life!" GROUPLOVE was uniquely positioned to describe this great, common human experience, screaming, shouting and floating above it.

7. Spoon - "Got Nuffin"



There was no more menacing combination of drums and guitar in indie rock in 2010 than on Spoon's "Got Nuffin." It defines the very need for down stroke guitars, before spiraling off and finding a few demanding piano chords to go with all the purpose of Britt Daniel's structure of guitar, bass and drums. The lyrics describe a moment of hope in an era of hopelessness. "I've got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows," Daniel reminds us as, we assume, he spends all this time losing only to find the freedom from constraint as the necessary descendant. It isn't a grand social gesture, some weak marching orders against the backdrop of a broken American life, just the private commentary of one man who sees his way out of the tunnel.

6. First Rate People - "Girls Night"

"Girls Night" was the one song of 2010 that seemed to unflaggingly cross boundaries, unifying disparate people behind a single bouncy keyboard progression. The vocals, the male-female back-and-forth kind, circle each other flirtatiously, throwing looks across the room and daring the other to come over. Their overlap is part of the charm, weaving in between one another, roping us closer and closer to First Rate People, a fantastically promising group from Toronto. No one else brought R&B to indie rock this year; no one else made something this irrefutably catchy. No one else is building these kind of would-be-hits for a mixtape you haven't made yet. This song is the hope that these two voices will cross the room and talk to each other, the hope that this is great and the hope that you will tell someone about it.

First Rate People :: "Funny Games"

The first installment of the Top 50 Songs of 2010 will be up in a few hours but we'll start with a song by a band we went nuts for in the first days of this calendar year. Toronto's First Rate People are going to close our year with the release of latest single, "Funny Games," with cover art drawn from the movie of the same name. The chorus, "I can turn on the bright lights and turn 'em back off, just to make sure I'm still in your life," is one of Jon Lawless' simple, brilliant mixtures of looping synths and an instantly memorable hook. The band is on a temporary hiatus right now, but, Jon assures us they're still alive and this is proof of life. We believe it and think 2011 could be even bigger than its predecessor.

Windmill Wedding :: "Espanola"

Jon Lawless of First Rate People has split for a minute to work on a side-project under the name Windmill Wedding. Is this a loose reference to a whirlwind courtship? Or is it a magically-real moment where Dutch wind towers walk and talk and flirt with each other, slowly the building the foundation of mutualistic, not to mention environmentally sustainable, romance? Nicole Jasper's talents in tandem, Lawless builds a classically hooky, summer jam around a bouncy synth line and one of those irrepressibly ebullient melodies that remind you: It's never not happening. "Espanola" takes off without looking down or back, a 45-degree jet stream in a blue sky. It is the far-side of the world from the Northern Ontario town from which the song gets its name, one of those secret places where young people make great music and its summer even when its freezing outside.